Back in the 90s, if you did mail order in music, you could make a good living doing it if you could hustle.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority. I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.

Young people like to feel self-righteous, like they're on the right side of things.

I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.

When you know where somebody is, you know the most important thing about them.

Conservative forces in the South have a lot of power - almost dynastic - dating back many years.

I have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.